Doctor Who: The Way Through the Woods (3 page)

‘It’s a shortcut. It doesn’t go near the woods.’ Emily felt put out that he was no longer paying her any attention. All this was spoiling the mood. ‘You’re not afraid of some bloomin’ old trees, are you—?’

‘Ssh!’ He held his finger up to his lips.

‘Don’t shush me, Lord Muck!’

‘Listen!’ he whispered. ‘Can you hear it?’

‘I can’t hear a thing…’ He was starting to frighten her. She was painfully aware now that she was alone in a dark field with a complete stranger. But the man didn’t make any move to hurt her. He kept on listening for a while, and then shook his head.

‘Funny,’ he said, to himself again, like she wasn’t there. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a motorway…’

‘A which-way?’

He turned to her and smiled. ‘I’m sorry, Emily,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. I… Oh, don’t worry about it. Shall we go back to the path?’

‘I don’t want to go back to the path,’ Emily said. She felt scared now, tricked, as if she had been brought here under false pretences. ‘I’m not sure I want to go anywhere with you.’

‘OK… Er… Well, we can stand here for a bit… If you’d rather.’

‘I’m not sure I want to stand anywhere with you, neither!’

‘Then what do you want to do? We’ll do whatever you want.’ Williams held his hands up, a peace offering. ‘I don’t want to scare you. I’m not scary, you know. I’m very ordinary.’ He looked it too, an ordinary young man completely bewildered as to what he’d done to upset a young lady. Emily suddenly felt very foolish, and very sad. ‘What do you want to do, Emily?’

‘Oh, I don’t know!’ Emily cried. Why had she come out here with this young man? What had she been thinking? Everyone had heard her say he could walk her home. She’d be a laughing stock in the morning. But why shouldn’t she come here with him? She was twenty years old, and her heart was broken, perhaps beyond repair – and what she wanted most of all was to feel alive again, young again, as young as she’d felt that night two years earlier when Sammy finally plucked up his courage and slipped the ring on her finger. Turning her back on Mr Williams, Emily walked slowly and deliberately towards the trees.

‘Emily… Er, what are you doing?’

Emily looked up at the sky. It was cloudy; the moon and the stars were gone. When she looked back over her shoulder, she could no longer see Williams through the dark. Something of her old spirit flared up within her.

‘Catch me if you can,’ she said and, with a laugh as young as spring water, she ran into Swallow Woods. Behind her, she heard Williams yell, ‘Emily! Wait!’ An owl, startled by the commotion, flapped up from its branch and hooted out its grievance across the empty silent fields before swooping off, high over the hollow. The two young people passed beneath the trees. Their leaves shuddered, and then turned unnaturally still. And that was the last Amy or the Doctor heard of Rory for quite some time.

The clock on the wall was a perfectly ordinary clock, the kind of clock that could be found in any institutional setting on practically every planet. The planet in question being Earth, this clock displayed (in perfectly ordinary circular fashion) a clear set of numbers ranging from ‘one’ to ‘twelve’. It also had an hour hand, a minute hand, and a second hand which ticked resolutely and didn’t lose time in such a way as to make life inconvenient for anyone. All told, this was a perfectly ordinary clock.

The wall upon which the clock hung was also ordinary, and the room of which the wall formed one side wasn’t particularly distinguished either. It had four stackable office chairs, a decent-sized table on which sat some recording equipment, a door with a lock, and a window with a view onto a car park. There was a blind on the window, but that was broken, and had been for several weeks. People kept forgetting to write the memo. The blind slumped diagonally down across the window, and was likely to remain in this position for some time yet. People had other things on their mind.

About the only thing that wasn’t exactly ordinary about the room was the man sitting behind the table. This man was on the youngish side of indeterminately aged, relatively tall, and he had unkempt hair and two pairs of loose limbs that looked as if they would fit more properly onto an entirely different body. The man wore a nice bow tie and an exasperated expression. He had spent the last forty minutes alternating between drumming his fingers on the table top and swinging back on his chair. About four minutes earlier he had started to get seriously bored.

The door swung open and two detectives walked in (for this ordinary room was one of many that, when put together, comprised a decent-sized if ordinary small-town police station). The man in the bow tie looked up.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘is this going to take much longer? Because the fact is I’m actually on quite a tight schedule and if that clock of yours up there is accurate – and I imagine it’s accurate, you all seem like very sober and responsible people, and it seems like a very sober and responsible kind of clock – then I need to go and chase down a couple of young women.’

The two detectives – an older red-haired man, and a younger blonde woman – looked at each other.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible, sir,’ said the older one, as he took his seat.

The younger detective sat down next to him and reached across to switch on the recording equipment. ‘Interview recommenced at,’ she glanced up at the clock, ‘ten thirty-seven.’

‘You seem to spend a lot of time on the road,’ said the older detective. ‘Do you travel around with many young women?’

‘Ah,’ said the unordinary young man. ‘Now. I see where you’re heading with that question, and I want to make it perfectly clear right away that none of them have ever come along unwillingly. Besides, it’s strictly invitation only.’ He considered these last statements. ‘Well, I suppose there was the history teacher. And the air stewardess. But they both had opportunities to leave and they both decided to stay… I’m not helping myself, am I?’

There was a slight and very strained silence.

‘I do need to get going, though,’ the young man said. ‘Things have turned out not to be as perfectly straightforward as I’d anticipated.’

‘Have you ever met a young woman called Laura Brown?’

‘No. And I haven’t met Vicky Caine either… Oh, you hadn’t mentioned her yet, had you? I’m really not helping myself, am I?’

‘If there is anything at all that you would like to tell us,’ said the older detective, ‘now is the time to do it.’

‘How about – if you want to find your two missing girls, then you should let me go immediately because you are dealing with a situation way beyond your comprehension? No? No, somehow I didn’t think you’d be persuaded. Oh dear, this is going to cause us some difficulties… What can I tell you…? Ah! There is something! Something that’s been bothering me.’

The young man put his elbow on the table and leaned forwards, beckoning to the two detectives to come closer. His eyes were very dark, shadowed, and they didn’t give anything away. Half-unconsciously, half-unwillingly, both detectives leaned in to listen.

‘Somebody,’ the young man whispered, ‘really ought to fix that blind.’

Two hours later, the police press conference about the two missing girls was getting ready to start. The TV journalists and news reporters had been gathering in the town square for the last hour like crows from a Hitchcock movie. The area directly in front of the police station was packed out; some of the cameramen had resorted to standing on the steps leading up to the war memorial in order to get any pictures at all.

Jess Ashcroft made her way through the crowd, ignoring the complaints of those she passed as she pushed doggedly through. Three or four feet from the front, she stopped, peered over the last few heads and nodded, satisfied that she was close enough to see. Just about. She dumped her bag on the ground, rummaged around, and pulled out a pen and notepad.

‘Nice moves,’ said a voice in her ear.

Jess looked round. The speaker was a bone-thin young man, expensively clad, holding a mobile phone like it was part of him. She recognised him at once from one of the news channels.

‘Big story,’ said Jess. ‘I don’t want to miss anything.’

‘Quite right!’ He grinned at her. White teeth. Cute as a button. ‘I like your style, though.’

‘You know what the old song says. Dedication’s all you need.’

He laughed. ‘Good for you! So, what do you make of the whole thing?’

‘Well…’ Jess didn’t want to play all her cards, not all at once. ‘Must be awful for the families, mustn’t it?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, rather impatiently, ‘but the police kept the first one quiet, didn’t they? There’s something weird going on there.’

‘Laura Brown
is
eighteen years old,’ Jess said cagily. ‘An adult. Well within her rights to get up and go wherever she likes.’

‘Nah…’ The TV journalist shook his head. ‘Doesn’t make sense. She was studying for A levels. Fundraising for a trip to Africa. Not the type to disappear into the blue. Yet the police don’t seem to have been bothered until the second one went missing. You have to wonder whether it would have helped poor Vicky Caine if she’d known there was kidnapper on the loose. I think someone’s head will roll over this.’

Jess chewed her pen. In fact, it had been no surprise to her that a second girl had gone missing. She’d been dreading the news ever since her younger sister, Lily, had texted two weeks earlier that her school friend Laura Brown wasn’t answering calls and her Facebook page hadn’t been updated. Jess had been waiting almost unconsciously to hear who was next.

‘Exam pressure?’ she said, not believing that for a second. ‘It can hit some people hard.’

‘Not likely to hit both of them, though, is it? I’m Charlie, by the way.’

‘I know. I’ve seen you on the telly. I’m Jess, from
The Herald
.’

His expression changed from friendly interest to friendly pity. ‘Local paper? Bless.’

‘It’s not
all
cinema listings and fake horoscopes, you know.’

‘No, I bet it’s not. I bet your octogenarian birthday coverage is first rate.’

‘Say what you like, but if anyone’s going to get a break on this story, it’ll be someone with local knowledge.’

‘Someone like you, you mean?’

‘Well, why not?’

Charlie laughed. ‘Then I’d better stick close to you, Lois Lane.’

‘Oh yes, very funny, chuckle chuckle. My kid sister likes that one.’

‘Keep your hair on, Lois. We’re all in this together.’

‘I think it helps to know the town, that’s all.’

‘Ah, and you’re probably right. Hey,’ he nudged her, ‘eyes forward. Here comes Inspector Knacker of the Yard. Not that he’ll have anything new to tell us.’

‘You think so?’

‘What’s he told us so far, Lois? It’s his head for the chop, I think. Bet you five quid he won’t tell us anything.’

‘Fine by me. Because I bet he’s going to tell us they’ve made an arrest.’

‘Fighting talk! What gives you that idea?’

Jess tapped her biro against her nose and then pointed the tip of the pen towards the policeman. ‘Shush. I want to listen.’

Detective Inspector Galloway waited patiently on the steps while the cameras flashed and a yell of questions leapt up, like the barking of hounds. Jess liked Galloway; she’d interviewed him a couple of times in the eighteen months since his arrival in town from Inverness. She had found him preternaturally polite and unfailingly helpful. Poor man. He looked dog tired, as if he’d been dragged through a ditch and then forced into a suit. The suit looked like it had been having an even worse time.

‘I’ll be making only a short statement right now,’ Galloway said. ‘I cannot of course comment on an ongoing investigation.’

‘Inspector,’ someone called from the crowd, ‘there’ve been some questions as to why the police were so slow in investigating the disappearance of Laura Brown and whether this contributed at all to the disappearance of Vicky Caine. Can you comment on that?’

‘I cannot comment,’ Galloway said patiently, ‘on an ongoing investigation. I shall be reading out a short statement—’

‘Inspector,’ someone else shouted, ‘can you confirm that no searches have as yet been carried out in the woodland area north of the motorway? Can you say why this is the case?’

Galloway hesitated. Jess, watching him, sucked in her breath, sharply. Was he about to go off script? What on
earth
would he say?

But Galloway collected himself. He cleared his throat and started again. ‘I’ll just read out a short statement,’ he said. ‘I can confirm that an arrest has been made in connection…’ All around the square, cameras began to flash, throwing Galloway briefly off his stride. ‘… an arrest has been made in connection with the disappearances of Laura Brown and Vicky Caine. A white male, mid-twenties…’ Galloway stopped and blinked into the cameras. ‘A white male in his mid-twenties is currently helping us with our enquiries. That’s all I can say at the moment.’

The clamour of questions rose up again immediately –
‘Inspector, can you confirm that this is now a murder enquiry
? – but Galloway turned and went back into the station.

Jess breathed out. She felt a deep sense of relief, as if some kind of disaster had been narrowly averted. She took off her glasses to rub her eyes.

Beside her, Charlie was opening up his wallet. ‘I’m impressed,’ he said, handing over a fiver. ‘Honestly. And I take back what I said about you being Lois Lane. You’re obviously Sherlock Holmes.’

‘Hmm.’ Jess wiped her specs clean and perched them on her nose again. She peered school-marmishly through them at Charlie. ‘Sherlock Holmes was a detective, you know, not a journalist.’

‘Lois it is, then.’

‘Or you could call me by my name. Which is Jess.’

‘Come to the pub, Lois. A gang of us are heading over later to the one on the corner. The Fantastic Fox—’

‘That will be the Fancy Fox.’

‘Hey, you really do know everything! Whatever it’s called, we’ll be there from around seven. Come and meet some people. Get your name about. I promise I won’t tell them it’s Lois.’ He went on his way with a wave. ‘See you later!’